Kansas Has Answers In Eight-sided Final

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Fifty years later, the uniquely Kansan experience of long, bizarre trips in search of their own selves was replayed.

At the end, as if awaking from a dream, there were the Kansas Jayhawks, NCAA basketball champions. There`s no place like home.

When the golden anniversary of the Final Four dovetailed with the same for the Wizard of Oz, something strange like this was fated. Something along the lines of losing twice to Oklahoma during a season and then upsetting the Sooners 83-79 for the national championship just across the border from campus.

As strange as 27-11 Kansas becoming the losingest champion of all. It had stumbled through a lot of life before knowing what it had.

If they only had a heart, the Jayhawks could do it. So, senior Danny Manning, finishing a stunning farewell tour, showed up Monday night in finest form. His four icy free throws at the end of the game could have been the smallest part of his evening.

``It`s over, that`s what I was thinking,`` said Manning of his mental process while looking down the last free throws.

Before or after the shots?

``Before,`` he fairly roared.

If they only had a brain. That`s not the question today as much as whether Kansas can keep its brain. No telling where this great cresting will carry Larry Brown. But he was on site Monday, devising a thousand escapes from the Oklahoma full-court defense and more ways to get the ball to Manning.

IT WAS THERE ALL THE TIME

If they only had courage. What? Is there still a question about a national champion that was once mired at 12-8, beset by suspensions, injuries and doubt?

Unreality reigns again in the Final Four. This was just the Big Eight variation on the 3-year-old theme of Villanova over Georgetown.

And just where has this Big Eight basketball been all our lives? Did they keep it in secret wheatfield silos? Or did the football establishment order it manacled and baffled to protect its own territory?

It`s out now, running coltishly from stanchion to stanchion, even crashing into the scorer`s table and ripping the Final Four logo clean from it.

The first half was a 50-50 proposition, an equal measure of boldness and brilliance. Kansas and Oklahoma came directly at each other, going 100 mph with headlights on, and neither swerved.

A mad careening, nearly enough to wrinkle silk-suited Brown.

It didn`t change with the second half. Oklahoma never backed off, it just sustained more damage, wearing out with almost half as few points in the second half.

Poor Kansas would find itself late in the half shooting 85 percent -- a freakish 17 of 20 from the field -- and trailing by three. Even the scoreboard did not believe what was going on beneath it.

There was no believing it.

MANNING HAS 101 USES

Manning, the Swiss army basketball player, performing every function possible on a court; and then inventing some new ones. A steal compounded by a delicate length-of-the-court outlet pass to a streaking guard. Another steal, but this time dribbling cross-country himself to roll in a shot while drawing the foul. A workday around the basket that made him appear as uncontainable as rising water.

He performed just as well in the second half, despite working most of it with three fouls. The line of 31 points, 18 rebounds and five steals was an understatement. He was opportunity`s lightning rod.

``The kids recognized Danny`s presence out there,`` Brown said.

Oklahoma had its own way to suspend belief. Most notably Dave Sieger letting fly six successful 3-point shots in the first half, then tying the tournament team record (Indiana`s seven of a year ago) by early in the second. There is a body cooled by freon.

For all of this, there was no way for Monday to resolve itself without the Big Eight getting any bigger. A conference`s conceit, once limited to the wishbone, expanded to this lacquered playing field and threatened to overwhelm the event.

In an uncommon cooperative gesture, the cheerleaders for both Kansas and Oklahoma joined before the game to lead the audience in a rousing cheer of ``Big Eight is great!``

A few football coaches are going to have to discover the forward pass to keep up.

One must go far to keep up with this one idea: Kansas is a basketball champion of the `80s.

That`s Larry Brown and Danny Manning, and Milt Newton and Kevin Pritchard and Chris Piper and even Jeff Gueldner.